Housing Advisory Committee Meeting   12/16/2020

Good afternoon all.

I received a couple of texts from stragglers, so we'll give them a second or three.

We know stragglers though, just stragglers.

Oh, well.

This is not my last meeting of the day.

Philip, are you actually getting snow where you are?

We're just getting mush.

A lot.

It's actually quite pretty.

So it's snowing.

My children are quite happy about this.

So it's good.

It's good.

Well, hopefully, you know, it wasn't like we were going to go anywhere anyway.

So it's not messing our commute up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're

And a week, Saturday, we're supposed to drive down to North Carolina.

So we'll see.

By then, I imagine there'll be no issues.

And we'll get to North Carolina, and it'll be 70.

So that'll be great.

My wife works on environmental issues.

Whenever the weather is warm, I like to point out she's not doing a very good job.

I've solved poverty.

All right, we're expecting one or two more to trickle in here, and we are one short of a formal quorum, but we just won't make any earth-shattering decisions in the next three or four minutes and sort of get things stood up.

So thank you all for your appearance here on this increasingly inclement day.

We are circling, this is the regularly scheduled HAC meeting.

We had intended to have most of this material

We've covered for November, but an impossible set of schedules just pushed us back.

So here we are and we have made some and I'm grateful for the accommodations that we've gotten from Jennifer and Philip, who agreed to join us today to sort of review this material.

And if you take a look at our agenda, we have our usual housekeeping and upfront stuff.

which we can sort of breeze through and then the city update.

Both Jennifer and Philip have indicated they're a little pressed for time so I think we should sort of front them first if that's all right and deal with that engagement which is that at the beginning of November we provided some feedback on the affordable housing plan to

Council and the Planning Commission.

And that was discussed at a joint session and we wanted to circle back to take a little deeper dive at that.

And this is our sort of first opportunity to be able to do that.

So you should have had in the meeting materials that were distributed yesterday, a copy of those comments, etc.

Was everyone able to access that okay from that link?

I assume, yes, good.

And we now have a quorum, great.

Thank you, S Lisa.

So if, I guess we can go through if there's, if either Brenda or Alex is in a position to give us a quick run on a city update if there is on deployment, and then we can just sort of jump into this.

So as you may recall, we allocated some of the CAF dollars and most of the CAF dollars for emergency relief.

We allocated four pots of money, rental relief, homelessness, re-entry and mortgage relief.

We, the city's Office of Economic Development was administering the rental homeless and re-entry funds.

We had not gotten to the mortgage relief and really didn't even have any requests for that this time.

And there was such a high demand for the rental relief, we moved

all the mortgage relief money over into that pot over a series of portions of moving that.

So overall in the rental relief we allocated $528,000 and of that

We have about 50,000 left and no longer taking applications because we know that money will be quickly finished up.

So those folks will be referred to the RMRP program that the state is now administering as that money will be running out pretty quickly.

The reentry program, we started with a beginning balance of 264,000.

We've committed about 180,000 of that, so we have about 80,000 remaining.

And of the homeless funding,

We had a beginning balance of 264,000.

We've committed almost 260,000 of that.

So have just under $10,000 balancing.

Yes, ma'am.

I don't know if I have that, but I can hold on.

Let me see.

It says number approved 214.

The average amount was about $2,200.

At least two months.

Well, first of all, thank you and everyone on staff for working so hard and quickly to deploy that money.

That was really great.

$1,000 left in the CAF that was not allocated to any of the relief programs.

So my question one is, is my recollection right?

And if so, what's the disposition of that money?

And then two, can we get an update on provisional CIP for the coming up fiscal year?

In other words, do we know what initial amount of money is gonna be in the CAF

I can answer as to the CIP number.

I think the staff is still kind of throwing around numbers to see what will be supported going to the Planning Commission.

So at this point, I really don't want to say as soon as the agenda items come out for the Planning Commission, I think we'll have our answer.

So as soon as I can see that or know that, I will let you know unless it all goes out at the same time, everybody finds out at the same time.

As to the balance in the calf, unfortunately, I don't know the answer.

As you know, we're kind of that person short.

Oh, no, if you could, when you gather that information, if you could send it out later to CAF or to HAC, that would be great.

Thank you.

Any other questions from Ms. Kelly?

Cool.

So I'd like to move the conversation on to a discussion of the affordable housing program.

recommendations and what I will do I think for that if it's okay with Dan is sort of let him drive at least at the beginning of that and for those of you who are participating we try to make this as inclusive as possible zoom notwithstanding so if you'd like to if you have a question or comment

and on the participant or public side, please raise your hand or otherwise attract attention and I'll try to circle back to you.

We'll try to integrate public comment to the extent we can, but we do wanna sort of get a deep dive as we go.

to Phil.

So just I want to really quickly go over the process.

The subcommittee took comments leading up to the hearing and then had public participation during the hearing, consolidated all of the comments from that hearing, both from the subcommittee and from the public, and summarized them in the memo that the HAC and the advisors received

probably what six, eight weeks ago at this point.

Without reading, everyone has the

Everyone at least on the hack has the recommendations.

But for members of the public who may be participating today, I wanted to take a little bit of time just to summarize the summary without going into detail because people can read it.

But I want to make sure that everyone participating is sort of on the same page.

So I'll start with a sort of high level summary.

And then we'll do a little bit of a round robin because different people on the subcommittee were largely responsible for consolidating and summarizing a lot of the information.

In general, the committee and the members of the public who participated were enthusiastic about the direction of the

Housing Strategy, felt like it addressed a lot of the right things, made some good, strong, bold recommendations vis-a-vis the data that we have relative to the

Housing Shortage, essentially, the discrepancy between supply and demand.

There were four primary areas that the group felt like the strategy when it comes forward can be strengthened.

One is in housing and economic mobility, two is in land, three is in homeownership, and four was in funding.

I'm not going to summarize all of those, but I will call on people to go ahead and summarize them.

And we'll start with the last one first, because I know Sunshine only has about 14 minutes left.

Sure.

And I don't have it in front of me, so if I miss something, please fill it in.

But the basic gist of it ends.

Jenny and Philip, you've heard me say this before in the other meetings as well, which is based on the going through of each of the suggested tool sets.

We have an initial assumption or initial recommendation for $10 million in annual funding, $1 million of which is to be allocated as in the current proposal for administrative

and then in each of the suggested tool sets, another 4 million is accounted for between property taxes, maintaining the CSRAP, et cetera.

And while all of those are absolutely, we acknowledge that all those are critically necessary, what it leaves is essentially half of that 10 million, roughly 5 million

for both capital projects as well as other support structures to support homeowners, residents, renters, et cetera.

And I think in our collective opinion, that's an insufficient amount of money for that pot of money to make the impact that we want to make, that we need to make over the next 10 years.

So one clear recommendation was to pull the $1 million out of the administrative component and wrap that into the city budgeting process separately and putting that million dollars in.

And then I do think there is room for digging into whether even in that context, whether 10 million a year is really the right number.

And I know Philip and Jenny, you know that I've reached out to ask for some of the details and how you got to the 10 million.

using the IAT and other structures.

And I think that would still be helpful for us to kind of hone in on what we think collectively is the right number, whether it's 10 million, 11, 12, I don't know the answer yet.

But until we have that information, I think it's difficult to make a clear recommendation.

That's the gist of it.

Yeah, that was good summary.

I think the one thing that you

but that you did in this was the specifically tying funding amounts to a tool such as the IAT or some other version of that so that we as a community can plan and so that future councils understand sort of what they're voting for, when they're voting for it, as far as it relates to an overall plan to eliminate the housing deficit.

With that, and Philip, if you wanna, I'm happy for you to jump in and ask questions, or if you prefer, we can go through the summary of the summary first, and then we can have a kind of round table.

I'm happy to talk, but I think we definitely have heard these comments before, and I've talked about them some before, but I'm happy to talk, like, to move the admin out,

Admin's important, but you move it out.

I mean, basically, the core position is like, this is not enough money, I think, right?

So the initial $10 million came from a kind of community-driven pro forma that became the IAT, the Intervention Analysis Tool.

It started from the question is within the realm of reality.

In other words, how much LIHTC money is available in a given region in any given year?

What's the capacity?

What's the land use capacity?

How much

Spaces there, for example, for expanding public housing, what would it take for us to get to 10, I'm sorry, to 4000 more interventions before 2040 to close the gap?

and it's not just spending the money, it's not just quantity of money, but spending it strategically and making sure that the money is there when it's needed to leverage outside funding.

And so this body took a long time to vet the IAT and we're hopeful that the IAT or some, if that's not the perfect tool, some other long range planning and funding tool could be incorporated into the plan.

Sure, so that's also we definitely reviewed the IAT, found it very helpful.

I think it's, you know, we've asked Sunshine some questions on this, but generally don't have any quibbles with the methodology of the IAT.

I mean, there are

Places where we might disagree on individual numbers, but the fundamental structure of the IIT is a reasonable and accurate way to look at things.

I think we can talk about, I hear what you're saying.

So I think basically just saying, making sure that we're putting a process that's clear about what number we're actually ultimately going to be driving towards.

over time and how this would all have to get there.

I think the challenge with that is that it wouldn't be, this is what we're gonna do.

This is the mix and these are the programs we're gonna fund at these rates for the next 20 years.

Absolutely.

And that was never the recommendation of the IT that we got it right.

What we did was put placeholders in there with unit costs and then told council that, look, your priorities could be something completely different.

and a council 10 years from now could have a completely different desire in terms of how they funded and supported different runs of the housing ladder.

What we want is a tool that reflects that.

So the council, instead of having to be in a position of being policymakers, funders can say, look, this is our preference.

Got it.

So having a tool in there is like this amount of funding and this allocation will get you this much impact.

And this is what it is relative to me.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Sure.

I can do that.

Let me drag it up here.

All right.

So let's see.

So I think we sort of broke this down, and not to get too deep into a summary of the summary, but one of the stronger takeaways we took from that was the cautionary tale that is presented in the draft, which is in and of itself land use,

has, one, is limited in and of itself, and number two, can't have these sort of unintended consequences.

And we agree that an overhaul of the land use is needed urgently.

As far as the specifics of the document, in our discussion of soft density that

And this is sort of a general theme where we looked at things that the various pieces of this of this plan was sort of the integration of them so soft density absent to sort of tie into its use and affordable housing.

So it's one thing to have

a broader buy right, but if you connect that buy right piece to, if you were doing something in the furtherance of affordable housing, multiple units, this two to four unit increased density makes sense.

We're not sure what the administrative or code tool is for that, but sort of a substitution of buy right soft density to buy right affordable soft density pointing that if the idea is we're gonna change soft density to sort of increase

We're looking for ways to tie it more tightly.

And then we also sort of stated the obvious, which is the zoning code needs an audit desperately and a thorough run through that and the standards and design manual.

I mean, there's lots of minutia we can get dragged into in there.

And then there's a great deal of interest in regards accessory dwelling units and putting them out there.

And one thing that we have, there's interest in it by individuals in this body.

There's interest in the city.

There's interest at within staff.

We've worked on a couple of pilot programs to sort of bring forward a financing mechanism for that.

And what we really see is the big obstacle there.

Beyond making the current ordinance comprehensible, and then it does need its own revisions, the big piece that we sort of see there is how to facilitate the financing of this by individual homeowners and in the city so that we can push out volume.

because that seems to be a large impediment to most of these programs.

And we've got some ideas on that, but integrating that into the, at all levels, it also is the financing piece that's got to come together.

And I'm sort of, so that was our issue there.

And then we also took a look at the land bank and we do have a, and even if,

Brenda Kelly is muted at this moment.

I can hear her teeth grind on this because she and I did a lot of work on a land bank ordinance and got it to the one yard line and before we were distracted by other matters.

But we do have a land bank ordinance that was rewritten in response to by largely by the hack in the city attorney's office.

to accommodate public input and to make a truly sort of public body of the land bank.

And we would, I mean, this isn't for you folks, but more for council, which is let's dust that off and push it forward.

So those are the main points that we made on the land piece.

The constant theme being one of sort of trying to integrate the policies more tightly.

I think that was the general sense.

I think so.

On one of them.

So on the soft density, on the soft density.

I think so, yes.

That the idea is that simply by creating more dense, more density, you're just going to get more unaffordable density and that we should push the limits of what's enabled by

If you took that route, what would the subsidy would cover to make that fine?

So in other words, if you're an affordable housing,

because it doesn't cover the cost of construction.

I mean, we can talk about it now.

But you're saying the only barrier to being able to do affordable homeownership was land value?

So cutting land and value in half.

No, no, no.

That can be combined with other subsidy.

Sure, sure.

Well, we don't, I mean, we take our position and describe it here.

It doesn't create subsidy, it creates supply.

The land use section is about the supply side of the solution.

So if you don't believe in the supply side, that's a fine thing to push back on, but it isn't a subsidy argument.

That's in the subsidy section.

In the subsidy section, we do talk about subsidy for landfill development.

on Tuesday 4.

So I'm just trying to make sure like, yeah, but why not?

Even with that, let me finish here, please.

We're saying we're you're opposed to because that's not how we write it.

And I want to make sure we revise it currently.

We're opposed to the soft density piece, even though we have a recommendation that provides additional subsidy for soft density, unless the soft density is affordable mandatory hack as opposed to it.

I don't disagree with that, but you're saying you would not support two of the fours if unless they're affordable.

Well, I don't speak for the entire group.

What I'm saying is as a developer and a former chair of the planning commissioner and somebody who lives in a city neighborhood, that if you want to reduce the cost, that if you want to create something more like an equalized playing field for affordable housing vis-a-vis market rate, unaffordable infill housing, then you also use the zoning code as a tool

So all for that I think there's two reasons to push back is one Charlottesville needs more supply and we do believe a supply side solution.

Two, it's hard to make this and get this approval process through to get public support to actually allow it to the force.

Yeah, I think you're misreading the tea leaves.

I think people in this community who live in R1 neighborhoods understand that they have to give something up because affordable housing is the thing that we're missing primarily in the community.

I don't know everybody in Charlottesville and I don't know everything, but that's not the feedback we've got in the comments.

That's not what proved to be true in Portland, which is a very progressive community.

We believe supply is part of the solution.

That is our recommendation.

No, and I agree with that.

But if you make buy right density in R1, R2, R3, R4 without an affordable housing provision, all you're going to get is more density and you're not going to put any downward pressure.

And there's a big push to make sure, like we take the position that you should not do soft density if you cannot also do it in the urban ring.

that we agree that the city of Charlottesville is not sufficient to actually have an impact on supply, and we lay that position out.

I would agree with that, but I also don't think that that's enough land use to, anyway, that's helpful, and I apologize for the sharp tone, I just wanna make sure I'm understanding what the comment and the recommendation is, and I think I do understand it, and do not absolutely agree with the idea that you need to

If you give away, I mean this is what we say sometimes we get pulled in to do inclusionary zoning policies to local governments.

You already gave away your density so you got nothing to trade.

And so you can't trade it for affordability so I don't like I think the point Dan is absolutely valid if you give it away, then you can't use it to help balance the scale so either it's buy right or it's being used to help support affordability you can't use it for

Both, and I acknowledge that point and don't, I think that's what you're saying.

If I get buy right, market right, build there, then I'm not giving an advantage to affordability.

Yes, and the flip side of that is if you do allow it buy right for affordability, you're doing both.

So this is, sorry, real quick.

And if I'm understanding this correctly, but at least my position as a member of the hack and maybe

And apologies if I didn't clarify this in the document before it arrived everywhere, but to where it says now, but is that soft density increases should not require a affordability in order to again generate or be able to participate in that density increase.

Should we have tools available to then, again, subsidize affordability in that density?

Other thoughts from other members?

Thanks, Chris.

My two cents.

Yeah, so I think not to get lost too much sort of in the absolutes here, the sort of overarching theme of this is the integration of these various tools.

and there is I think a place when we talk about buy right affordable or soft density buy right and affordability and tying it to that

It need not be done in, I mean, I don't think that we're in a place to roll out, here's the plan for that, right?

But we are certainly in a place to say, if we tie affordability for the ease of these things, that if you want a four unit, the easiest way to do this is that, you know, here's how it needs to look.

We needn't sort of be an absolutist about it, but integrating the idea that it is, you know, it is way easier and simpler

and that may be getting a little fuzzy with Buy Right to make it blisteringly clear that affordability is upfront and that's the way to push it.

So, and I may have made this more binary than it is.

And one, I think important thing called here is that we're going to go through a whole land use rewrite, and that'll be a place where you guys, I think a lot more of the threading of the needle, this will happen, but it's important for us to get the language right.

So we're framing.

framing the direction going in.

So this is I appreciate the back and forth.

It's helpful.

So we're trying to get that.

Yeah.

What I what I had a hard time with was, was it being stated as a binary that that there

But that has to be a tool in the toolbox is that you get extra concessions, extra advantage by providing affordability as one of the tools in the toolbox.

Exactly how he just stated it.

Affordability needs to be a part of this.

It needs to be truly emphasized.

Thank you, Lisa.

I have a little bit.

Planning Commission asked me to explain this section.

And I said, I'm sorry, it wasn't there.

I don't know what they're saying.

Terribly embarrassing, entirely my fault.

What confused me reading this is I thought the inclusionary zoning and higher density residential section was this thing that you're talking about.

I thought sense of density was a different supply thing.

So this is something else we're already gotten feedback on.

I think we can be a little clearer on is there's two things where we're increasing density, a multifamily by right and single family soft density.

We also have an inclusionary zoning policy.

In our recommendation, we're going to try to make language much clearer on this.

The multifamily and inclusionary zoning are married.

and you cannot, it's a no divorce state.

You're not doing multifamily by right without the inclusionary zoning policy.

Now I'm excited for the back and forth and discussion about how you design that inclusionary zoning policy and how you feel about fees and lose, because there's a lot of different policy goals there, but I'm just gonna relay some of those out, but we don't get into that conversation because that'd be a whole other conversation, but we do lay out some of the key points and we have some example materials there.

We did not draw as clear a connection between the IZ policy and the soft density.

And part of that is usually there's not enough units, like even four units isn't enough to go mandatory.

Like you don't have enough cost to spread it over.

And that's a little bit I was pushing on the cost side because maybe I'm wrong on the market.

But that doesn't mean you couldn't have a voluntary IZ for your

for yourself, Dan, which I think is abbreviated way of kind of what I think I hear you saying.

I'm not sure the right way to write that and not make things more confusing.

So I need to go back and read the document.

But I think that those relationships, maybe literally we might just create a diagram that shows the relationships.

But showing those relationships I think is where there's confusion.

I don't think we were clear.

We were clear to ourselves, but I don't think,

Given the feedback we've gotten from multiple sources, I don't think we were clear to anyone else, so it's not very useful.

So Lyle, I would just, let me give you one example just to exemplify, if this helps you explain it to the Planning Commission.

So let's say you're in a neighborhood, call it neighborhood X, that's a high income census tract.

and someone sells their home and land for $300,000, just let's say.

If you want to take that home and build a second unit or build a duplex, attach onto it and build a duplex, tear it down and build another one, essentially you're paying $150,000 for the land rather than $300,000 for the land.

and so you've reduced the price of that land by half and so conceivably you could come in potentially probably with other subsidy because $150,000 is a lot for a piece of land as Philip suggested but now you're paying $150,000 per unit for that land combined with other subsidies you can build affordable housing

That alone may not get there.

It would get there if you can go to four units.

So you can buy that same unit, that same parcel with the improvement on it for 300 and turn it into four homes.

Now you're paying $80,000 give or take for a lot under affordable home and it gets to be affordable.

as opposed to simply saying anybody can get increased density by purchasing that land because then there's no

There's no advantage that's given to affordable housing, so anybody can take that home, separate it into four lots, build four units, but if there's no, and that, to Philip's point, that is increasing supply.

But given the shortage, not just in the neighborhoods in Charlottesville, but also in the urban ring,

You're probably more likely to get a situation like Palo Alto where you have $4 million homes on what had been a single parcel than affordable units on that land.

Does that make sense, Lyle?

It's a huge failure for affordable housing perspective.

Economic development people are always really excited, but the affordable housing side, not so great.

The tech companies are going to buy all the affordability.

It's going to be great.

All right.

Well, I think there's enough there that if the public wants to comment more and ask more questions, they can.

Just very quickly, you know, we

Necessarily we talk about affordable housing.

We think about units and I try to keep focused on people because we serve people and affordability.

Affordable housing is housing that people can afford.

We're talking about a $10 million a year investment in affordable housing.

Yet on the other side, we have employers with

hard to fill jobs that pay $45,000 or more waiting to hand that income to people who could then use that money to pay market rate rents or buy an affordable house.

And while I understand the housing study wants to focus on units, I would very much appreciate if there were some at least acknowledgement that an equally effective part of an affordable housing process

could be focusing on intentionally boosting the incomes of the people who live here.

And I think we have the possibility of doing that in Charlottesville.

And it would be nice to just have someplace which recognizes the linkage between income and affordability.

So that's an overall thought that I'd like to just have a little bit more acknowledgement in the plan.

And then just quickly on the other two items that were listed in this section, there are some very,

specific housing related items that relate to income mobility.

For example, folks who are living in subsidized housing, there's a great benefit there because their rent is limited by their income.

And while most of our job seekers who are low income are working full time and therefore can't get the skills they need to climb the ladder, there is an opportunity to say, well, what if you cut back on your hours at your very

in an insufficient low wage job, had your rent reduced so that you didn't have to work so hard and then spend time getting the skills you need to make you more valuable in the eyes of employers so that you could actually move up the income ladder.

And I think there is a very, very interesting thing that we could do there.

And as we mentioned in this document, making subsidized housing potentially a launching pad for those low income workers who have capability of moving up the income ladder

but need an intentional effort to help them move up.

And then the last item had to do with wealth creation and home ownership.

A lot of time is spent on affordable rentals.

Our job seekers, we've now served our 1,000th job seeker.

Nearly 80% of our job seekers are interested in home ownership but the gulf between even what they can make in the second rung of the income ladder and what housing costs to buy in our community is limited

and so focusing on shared appreciation, including employer assisted housing, shared appreciation processes where the employee pays what they can toward an affordable home, a fund pays the difference and then when the house is sold, both parties share in the appreciation that is gained.

But in that way, increasing the wealth of that homeowner, rather than going at the other end of the home ownership

a continuum which limits the sales price of that house, which limits the wealth creation of that homeowner, leaning more toward the shared appreciation approach and less toward the deed restriction limiting the value of that home so that the homeowner doesn't actually benefit from the wealth creation that is generated by home ownership.

And I saw that Jennifer wanted to speak and I talked right over her.

I just wanted to note on the topic of wealth creation in general and building wealth, not only setting the housing piece of it, you know, this is something we have tried to tie into the pieces of the comprehensive plan that were out through November.

This thought not only about building, bringing in the sort of community along with any economic development locally, but also providing, looking at training opportunities and

access to information about wealth building and whatnot.

So I want to let you know that as far as the comprehensive plan goes, that is something that we want to bolster.

We heard a lot about that not only in May and June, I'm sure also in this most recent phase as well, we're still summarizing input received.

But so I just want to pop in to say that we certainly agree that this is a priority.

I mean, definitely, affordability is income and price.

And so we can definitely make sure we're clear on the income side of that.

And I think we could explicitly tie, I mean, I think even just adding an action line or something that this will be a part of the comprehensive, the Seville plans together, comprehensive plan update or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Happy to acknowledge it.

On the, we are, you know,

I think, as Lisa made the comments most directly in our standing committee, like we are adding language about employers sponsored home ownership.

There are examples.

I don't know of a lot of great examples Well, I think that's a part of the resource Process is that we delve into all possibilities and not what we think will be approved by City Council and Just truly do a deep dive in this because and I'm not saying that you are but I'm saying I would like to see more

on this particular topic.

And I think that having the conversation with the employers tied into it is 100% relevant.

I don't agree with the idea of having participants in public housing decrease their income so that they can take training.

Why not stop penalizing them for earning income and making

Some of their benefits go away when they're trying to be more productive citizens by increasing their income.

We need to get out of that mindset of making people feel like they need to be less than to participate.

And going to school, I mean, that's great.

But why do they have to fall back, become more dependent on a system to rise up out of a system?

I don't think that that's the right approach.

And I do, Ridge, would like to hear more about the shared aspect of some of that home ownership.

What's the difference in the land bank example versus some of the other shared equity that you're talking about?

I would prefer homeowners to have full participation in equity and stop

Driving programs that have them be less.

That's the part of the problem and that expands that wealth gap.

They are considered homeowners, but they're getting less.

I understand the fact that we want to make things more affordable and we want to do that, but racial equity still needs to be a part of this conversation and we need to come up with ideas that don't just continue to feed into what we've always done.

That's what I would like to see and that's a little bit of my frustration with some of these proposals is it feels like we're doing what we've always done or what we are going to get approved by City Council.

Throw everything out there.

The public wants to hear more of this.

what we haven't seen as well.

So I would like to see more creation.

As you said, Phil, there are other avenues for home ownership that you are aware of, but you haven't researched, delved more into it.

And if I'm misquoting you, I'm sorry.

But I think the point is that we want to see more examples that lead to home ownership and decreasing that wealth gap.

And I feel like

Time after time, I'm the only one truly drilling that factor home.

So on the shared equity versus in the home ownership piece, this is a piece where I got language here and I want to make sure I drill in and it's okay if not everyone's on the same page, but I want to make sure I'm hearing it all.

So there's three, this is a simplification, but just a simplification so I can have a conversation.

I acknowledge there are many other iterations.

There's a tension between future affordability and wealth building.

There's a tension there.

And there's three basic runs we look at on the spectrum.

One is running a down, and I know I'm saying down payment assistance program, but just stick with me for a minute.

We run a program and it's a grant.

The household gets some of our money, it's down payment assistance.

It's more than just the down payment.

It helps them buy down the property.

The mortgage is potentially more than 5%.

And it's forgiven over five years or 10 years or something, but basically it becomes a grant if they stay in the house.

And that does the most to build wealth for the family.

There's no two ways about it.

That builds the most wealth for the family.

That's just math.

You can have lots of arguments, but that's actually a pretty clear math thing.

The second option is,

the assistance is given, there's no interest charged, but when the household goes to sell, then the loan comes, they get all the appreciation, all the equity, everything they pay down the house, but the loan is paid back.

And then either awarded to another family or it's recycled and it stays in the program.

That's got good affordability and good wealth building, but not as much wealth building, certainly not as much wealth building, because you're not giving $30,000

Yeah, but it's not shared.

And then the other end is more for long-term affordability, where when that house is sold, a portion of the appreciation and value, and there's lots of different formulas and ways this can be calculated, is repaid.

So that decreases wealth building.

So those are the three notches.

And in the plan, when it comes out again, we will show a prototypical, just,

Please don't throw too many rocks at us about the example pick.

We're just gonna pick an example of like a purchase or an example that happened and like how those different splits would actually, what that would result in for the family in terms of wealth building.

Our inclination right now is to recommend the middle one, which is a grant that is repaid, but the household gets all the appreciation, all the equity and increase in value, but they repay however much the public money is, the public money comes back.

This would be different than what would happen if there was an employer coming back.

As Lisa said, I think the very reasonable point, like that is a, that's not a new innovation.

That's a standard program that exists.

So it's not a new innovation, but we're trying to balance this long-term affordability.

And so we landed there and I feel like I have comments off the full spectrum on this and they pointed me in a rejection, which is okay, but curious, you know, grant zero interest loan or shared equity.

Do we all,

Well, so that's a segue into the home ownership component.

I think there was very strong consensus that on the spectrum of grant deferred permanent that you just laid out.

that there wants to be more emphasis on the grant side, especially for people at the lower incomes.

And so there were a few questions about the home ownership recommendations.

So we didn't mean to suggest that and we've read that and we've gone through a document.

So that's bad graphic design on it.

I think we just ran out of spacing.

So we'll just get rid of the chart.

Okay.

Well, that's good to know because, you know, I can speak from personal experience.

And it definitely is harder.

And I think it won't be the majority, but to design a program that you're excluding,

Got you.

Well, so then in terms of the spectrum of forgivability of the subsidy, I think what we felt like is that probably should be something because if you look at the demographics of poverty in Charlottesville and how that relates to home ownership,

how it relates to race, that it's a sort of proxy in some way for race to provide more equity at the lower incomes and that's more of a way to undo past injustices like redlining, like deed restriction, like exclusionary zoning, etc.

And so there should be a recommendation that actually pushes more grant type subsidy, the lower the AMI.

So in other words, if you're, so let's say for example, you're at 30% of AMI you purchase at home, maybe your forgivability period is five years rather than 15 years or something like that.

Got it.

That's very clear.

And that makes sense and fits with the racial equity lens.

I don't think I completely got that reading it.

Great.

Thanks.

And then there weren't explicit mentions.

It did seem, and this was, it was hard to tell from what you all presented, cause it wasn't the plan.

That's what we heard early.

The feedback over time has shifted our direction.

Also, frankly, being able to take the,

The survey data and parse it based on race has moved us more towards home ownership.

Because if you look at it, I mean, we've laid this out before, but if you look at it, overall survey results, actually home ownership scored on the lower end.

But then if you adjust by race or tenure type,

the view on home ownership and its importance really shifts pretty dramatically pretty quickly.

But I actually think this is like one of the things we'll probably see if we have more representation in the allocation is more funding for home ownership.

That is what the survey said.

It wasn't a perfect survey.

I'm glad to hear that and not surprised because that's that's what we hear every day you know but but to to S Lisa's point you know one of the things that that could strengthen us again I realized we were looking at an outline not the plan etc for example public housing residents paying more when

When their incomes go up, one of the recommendations was for bolstering things like the resident self-sufficiency program.

So when their incomes go up, that money is escrowed so they can become homeowners or utilizing Section 8 or housing choice vouchers for homeownership.

et cetera, strengthening IDA programs, creating other tools of wealth creation rather than penalizing people for step for climbing the income ladder.

As Lisa, did I describe that?

And those are not out of the box ideas.

And those are ideas that currently exist that I don't see emphasizing this plan.

No tension.

You were clear.

You were clear at the steering committee.

We haven't made all the revisions yet, but those are revisions that are in process.

And we have analysis on that.

I got to find the right study, but the best study is Chase has a study that basically says home ownership is much more effective if you give households money in an account as opposed to make them pay down payment.

It's not shocking, but they have the analysis to show it.

That's the way we operate my end of the business too.

It's a lot easier to fix problems with a bank account than not.

We're scrolling up on one o'clock and I know that both Philip and Jenny have the potential to turn into a pumpkin here.

Real quick, Chris Meyer again from LEAP and apologies for not ensuring that it was in the original hack summary, but I had mentioned in our review being uncomfortable with the suggestion of the state for rent capping rents.

Thanks.

No, no, that's helpful feedback.

And we should, we'll look at how to provide it.

I also say there's, even with your Democratic majority and your state legislature, this one's not happening anytime soon.

But the feedback is still,

Still important, and so we can look at how we talk about it and the balance there, because there is a balance to it.

You can do really, like Takoma Park right by DC, they have a rent regulation program that has actually not been helpful at all for affordability.

So any other comments from, yes, it looks like, hold on Elaine, I'm coming for you.

Let me get over here.

So we had a couple of questions when Elaine and Brandon.

Yes, hi.

I am just actually just want for kind of the next round.

It sounds like there's gonna be a much longer conversation when it comes to land use.

and I think it'll help in that conversation for us to, us meeting like the city at large, but also kind of the tenant advocates to know what assumptions are kind of, are built into recommendations.

So I just heard, you know, kind of this, and we've heard this a lot and would love to hear about studies that you might have that support this, this idea that, you know, supply,

is kind of the only way for us to try to create more affordable housing and its supply, like blanket supply, right?

So that, you know, providing more buy right ability to build luxury units is, you know, I just don't, I don't know enough.

I don't, I don't know what the studies look like to know whether like that trickle down approach works to actually provide more housing for

low-income people.

And so if we could kind of couch some of those conversations moving forward about that, because I just want to lift up Dan's point, which is, you know, from CLIC's perspective, the last thing we want is historically Black neighborhoods having like just increased by a right density when they've already suffered historically for so long.

to basically, as you said, give away those rights with nothing in return.

And I think that's a really dangerous game because the demand here in Charlottesville is so incredibly high that if you give the opportunity for luxury housing, even now in the pandemic with people moving here from other towns, because you can work from home now, it's just not going to necessarily lessen the pressure that's happening in town.

So that's just what I was thinking.

So I wanna give a quick response and acknowledge that.

So one, we did some housing calculators for a group called Up for Growth that look at how you increase supply and how that changes affordability.

And I think we did some academic research in addition to it.

They're not for Charlottesville, so it's not apples to apples, but I'm happy to share it.

I think it's worth looking at.

And I think we've tried to say this in a language clear, and we can be clear on this.

Supply will not serve your lowest income levels.

I know we say that explicitly.

So think 60% AMI and below.

Supply has a modest, almost no impact at that level because

You use the term that people, supply siders never want to use, but you use exactly the right phrase.

It's trickle down, because that's exactly the concept.

And nobody likes the trickle down is a discredited viewpoint on things economically.

Supply side does really matter, but it matters more on the home ownership in the middle.

Think about 80% AMI.

It matters much more at those levels.

And we've tried to say that, and we will even be more explicit in there.

We think it is part of the solution, but it's not fundamental.

unchecked supply gives you Houston.

Houston still has a massive affordability crisis.

So we don't, we are not, we will be careful on language and we're always happy to come back and say this again.

We are not ideological supply siders.

We think supply is part at a very, you know, constrained part.

Also, we try to acknowledge that what can be good for the housing market as a whole can be terrible for a neighborhood.

And so

The way land use is done, it falls disproportionately on those who have less political clout, and that falls almost entirely on racial and economic lines in almost every community we work in.

I think we agree with most of what you're saying, and we're going to try to reflect that in what we write.

You think we're writing something that's going to be misused to say that if we just build it, it'll solve everything.

Please call us on that because that is not what we intend to endorse.

Just super fast.

I did want to sort of bolster Lane's comments.

And, you know,

There's a difference between historically white neighborhoods and historically black neighborhoods.

And I think it's really important that we protect what's in existing black neighborhoods to prevent displacement so that investment properties aren't going into those neighborhoods that are one with smaller lots.

And I wanted to just chime in a little bit on the conversation about rent and employment job training.

Housing authorities have the ability to do what's called an earned income disallowance.

Basically, if you get an increase in income due to a new job,

You can keep your rent from going up, which can help people.

It really helps to not penalize people.

Unfortunately, HUD is interested in eliminating that, which is a real drag.

But currently, that is an option for residents.

And if that can be utilized in the terms of employment and training, that might be helpful.

I think Ms. Herndon's right that when somebody

just because their rent goes down, their income would still go down basically three to one.

So that's not super viable for residents.

I don't know that that's overall gonna work.

So finding solutions that don't penalize people and that could include adding more cash to the pot, having more paid trainings,

and working around some policy things as best we can.

And lastly, I just wanted to hit at the money.

I'm a big fan of big numbers.

I'm really glad that 10 million a year is being floated, but I think we can do more and I think the council can agree to do more.

I know times are tough.

It might not be the most politically expedient thing to do, but I think we can push for more money and very much support Dan's concern that that money needs to be tied to actual plan and potentially using the intervention assessment tool to guide that money decision.

That's all.

This is Michael here, just real quickly.

I would just want to echo what was said earlier about the importance of, I think, framing some of this around the idea of community wealth building.

I think that's a really important framework, both in the comp plan and in this housing strategy.

And at least how I think about it in that framework, it kind of, at least in my mind,

In that framework, it makes some of the conversations about permanent affordability or community land trust a little less either or.

I think like there's organizations like communitywealth.org that really look at

community wealth building as community land trust, community development corporations, community development financial institutions, all working together as an ecosystem to build wealth.

And I strongly believe it's not as either or there and that the community land trust model has a lot of flexibility and when you look at

Like, for example, the first land trust in Virginia was Habitat in Richmond.

Habitat, the parent organization's strategic plan, recommends that affiliates either create or partner with a land trust.

And you look at their use in Austin and other cities that

By no means it is the only tool.

It's a tool that has limitations, but I think if we're looking at it in that community wealth building framework that it can be a critical way towards actually building wealth and getting rid of some of those wealth gaps that have been created by policy in the past.

So I just hope we're able to

incorporate some of those tools with that lens in mind because I think there are tools that they're not the only tool we're going to need, but they're really powerful for wealth creation and I think we can incorporate them into the plan with that in mind.

And then a final comment.

I think the $10 million number is obviously the headline number and really important.

But I think one of the things that's going to be really foundational for the city is getting these staff positions in place and getting the staffing capacity improved.

And I think that's really going to be the foundation for being able to execute any plan.

OK, so as I said, both Jenny and Philip, you do have danger in turning into a pumpkin here.

So I don't want to keep you longer than you were already committed to.

Appreciate the comments and the feedback.

And thank you all.

Hopefully we can get this right, I'm sure.

Sounds good.

All right.

Thank you.

Happy Ho-Ho and all that.

So, all right.

It is now 11-1-12.

That was a very substantive conversation, I think.

The update on our current planning, we're going to have to punt that since Sunshine, our esteemed leader there, had to depart.

And our backup discussion leader is not available for that.

So are there any other matters we should be addressing here?

Are there any other comments from the public at this time?

Anything else that we need to sort of discuss?

This is Chris updating on the short-term rental issue and study.

I know, again, Delegate Hudson has submitted a language to the people that draft the bills for them around this, but with the limited amount of bills someone can submit, there's

You know, it's up in the air on whether it actually will get potentially, I guess, reviewed by the General Assembly.

So but there is movement and she seems to be shopping around, which again, the bill would allow municipalities like Charlottesville to basically mandate Airbnb or BRBO to

share all the hosting information that their hosts are doing and thus increase taxes or use that information for code enforcement.

So that's that.

I personally and anecdotally have seen things are picking up again in the space, it seems like, and so again,

For better or worse, hopefully we're just paying their taxes and helping get our tax base higher during this more difficult economic time and good for everybody who needs some additional assistance to maybe again meet their mortgage payments.

But again, the concerns about invading of some of our neighborhoods and flipping these houses and properties into short term rentals, I think is still a very valid concern.

Hopefully, if you see Delegate Hudson around, you might mention to her that you'd like to see that move forward.

That's what I know about that.

And if I could, Phil, just two quick things.

I would love to figure out where we are in lieu of security deposit.

Hey Rich, that actually did pass already.

And the money's been allocated.

So the money's there.

I think it needs to go for a RFP for a administrator, I believe.

Wow, I missed that.

Well, that's a great update.

Wow.

Well, thank you.

And so we're a step closer.

Well, that's fantastic.

I don't know how I missed that, but there you have it.

And the other thing I just wanted to mention very briefly, and this is to S Lisa, just the nut I'm trying to crack on climbing the income ladder is the challenge that a lot of our job seekers face, which is they're full-time workers trying to pay the rent and the utility bills.

They're full-time parents.

And in order to,

get the value that they need in the marketplace, they also need to be full-time students.

Because while we've gotten really good at getting people to that $30,000 income level with the help of a lot of partners in our community and a lot of hard work, the next step is how do we get them into that $45,000 a year job?

And unfortunately, while we can get people into the 30,000 or they can get themselves into that $30,000 a year job with two months of training,

The next step that makes them worth $22.50 an hour as opposed to $15 an hour often takes almost 12 months of skills training to give them that value.

And the nut I'm trying to crack, and I'm looking at every single possible tool in the toolbox, is how do we let that job seeker get that training to give them more value while still allowing them to keep a roof over their head, pay for the groceries.

And what we know is that

Folks who are not full-time students often don't actually end up completing and so that's the nut I'm trying to crack is how do we relieve the burden on that job seeker so they can obtain more value and be worth $45,000 in our marketplace rather than $30,000

I understand that and I support that idea to the detriment that I don't agree with you that they should

decrease so that they can be more dependent on the public assistance.

I disagree with that.

Why not work with the actual system to help support them instead of decreasing the income that's coming into the family?

We've trained families who want to do better to always stop and question, oh, if I do this, if I take this progressive step, my hand is gonna be smacked and I'm gonna lose something.

So why not create systems or work within

what's already there, which it sounded like Brandon talked about.

Yep.

So earning an income disregard is great once they get to that higher income level.

I'm just trying to figure out how do they get from here to there given the practical limitations of time and bandwidth.

And, you know,

I hear what you say.

I mean, one possible solution would be, and what works in some industries and sectors is apprenticeships where you earn and learn.

You don't sacrifice your earning capacity in order to get more skills to be made more valuable.

Unfortunately, apprenticeships in healthcare are not

done currently in Virginia.

They're certainly something that we should and we are exploring.

I understand that, but I also want to keep in mind the historical nature of public

Assistance and African Americans, how it relates to that.

So look at it from a broader lens and that already cultural mindset where you place people in a system and it's like, okay, how do I slowly climb out?

Well, let's make you more dependent on the system temporarily.

so that you can get up higher.

I don't agree with that mindset.

That's all.

I agree with what you want to do.

I think we're all in the same boat, but I don't agree with that particular method.

All right.

So thank you both.

Are there any other matters that are pressing before this body at this time?

Just the same thing I say all the time.

What's the deal with the land bank ordinance?

So the land bank ordinance has been revised within an inch of its life.

There's a little bit of work that needs to be done with it in the city's attorney's office.

I am

I would love for them to find a little

rummaged about with to clean it up so that we could bring it to council because I think we did a lot of work on it.

We addressed the main community concerns.

We addressed the legal concerns.

We addressed the structural concerns.

So I would urge whoever needs urging to sort of see if we can't get that dusted off in the spring and represent it.

Particularly since it costs us, it'll cost us $100 to stand it up.

So I think that's a fairly useful deployment of city dollars.

So that's where I think we are, but it's not front-burnered anywhere.

Thank you.

Can you update us maybe on where UVA is at and potentially participating in this group, representative from them, considering their role in the community?

And I know we lament, I think, frequently that they're not participating, but has there been any recent, I guess, movement on that or do we need to?

Was that to me?

So, Rach and I both sort of poked out on that a few months back.

Unfortunately, our last interaction was timed beautifully with COVID and COVID response.

So the feedback we got was sort of a, yes, of course, but right now we're on fire.

but we'll circle back to you.

But I think you're absolutely right, it's critical, particularly if we're gonna start for numerous reasons, their position as a landowner, their economic engine, the fact that they're the largest employer here and if we're gonna start talking about employer provided housing, they're already in that business, they've made an interest about being more into that business and that's a huge piece of our puzzle.

You're right, and Ridge and I should probably chat offline about the best way to move forward to try to get some useful interaction there and re-engage with the university.

Yeah, I just think I've seen a big public, not Brujah, sorry, but big public push publication around their new community outreach center on

Westmayne or whatnot, and in theory, I would hope that this type of body would also be part of that new focus of theirs.

Anyways, I would, yes, thank you, Chair and Ridge, maybe for, again, poking them again and ideally hopefully bringing them back into this group.

Second, if the one last kind of related thing, and apologies if this was covered earlier in the top of the meeting, but I think Albemarle County's working on their affordable housing plan.

Stacey was here earlier, but I do not see her at the moment.

So she might've had a one o'clock commitment.

I can give a little bit of an update.

So they have drafted up an affordable housing plan.

I think you can probably find it online.

because just recently they had a Joint Planning Commission Board of Supervisors meeting where they had a pretty lengthy discussion, had some comments.

And just,

Real quickly, Lyle posted this in the chat as well, but at the last Regional Housing Partnership meeting, there was a representative from UVA who said they're diving back into their commitment to build 1,500 affordable units, which by their own admission, they said they sort of put that on pause once COVID hit, and they're getting ready to dive back into that.

So hopefully that may spur their participation in

in this group and other discussions.

And likewise, Albemarle County is part of that RHP process and was having just some preliminary conversations about perhaps tying in the urban ring to the timeline of when we would do changes to our zoning, as well as the RHP was looking to perhaps get some small contributions from localities to try to become a more robust body to help coordinate some of these

Chair, I just, sorry, and I'll be quiet after this point, but the city is now executing part of their climate consultation on their new climate action plan with a big component being focused on residential buildings and energy efficiency because

residential buildings are the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions related to the city.

So I just encourage, of course, something that LEAP is very interested in because we do a lot of that work in the town, but for everybody, if you're worried about energy burden as part of, utility burden as being part of affordable housing considerations, I would encourage taking a look at that because

Any other business before this committee?

Any other public comment?

Any motion before this committee?

I move to in the in the meeting.

Second.

We have a second.

Is there any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Thank you all very, very much.

Happy Ho Ho.

I will see you next year.

I will note that our next meeting is scheduled for noon on January 20th.

I would suggest that we might punt that back to two o'clock for obvious reasons or move it off a day, but we'll get back on that since I assume we'll be consumed with, we'll have other things on our mind at noon.

If there's nothing else, we are adjourned.

Thank you very much.

Hang up.